Innovative Pentamode Bearings with Polymer Matrix Composites – Application to Wind Turbines
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Metamaterials have been attracting high attention in the past decades thanks to their extraordinary properties and have been discussed for application in numerous fields, such as optics, mechanics and electromagnetics. Among them, the subcategory of metamaterials has been extensively studied due to their diagonalized elasticity tensor, in which five out of six elements are equal to zero. This implicates their featuring a low shear stiffness, while they are capable of maintaining their compression stiffness, a characteristic constituting them ideal for application in seismic isolation. Moreover, pentamode lattices confined between two stiffening plates have been shown to increase their compression modulus. Polymer Matrix Composites have also been offering a wide variety of applications, since they offer high structural properties combined with durability and low weight. In this paper a bearing composed of a Polymer Matrix, in which layers of pentamode lattices are embedded, is suggested for wind turbines vibration isolation. Each pentamode layer is comprised of connected pentamode unit cells in both horizontal directions. A hyperelastic material is used to model the resin and an elastic-perfectly plastic one is used for the rods. The bearing is placed on the base of a wind turbine. Real-life seismic excitations are induced to the turbine. The pentamode plasticity acts as the energy dissipation mechanism of the turbine. Its response is compared to that of a turbine without a bearing and with conventional bearings in order to highlight the effect of the proposed structures. Furthermore, variations of the bearings, where intermediate stiffening plates are placed and the pentamode layers are considered to be rotated per 45° in order to avoid the pentamode anisotropy, are discussed. The differences in the response of the turbine are demonstrated. The importance of the stiffening plates to withstand the weight of the turbine is underlined.